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When I grew up we lived a couple of km’s from an IKEA store, and our home was almost completely furnished from IKEA. Back in the 80’s there was often missing screws and other smaller detail, but as it was never a problem to get them replaced at the store and the store was just a walk with the dog away, we didn’t mind…

Today the missing-screw-problem is almost gone, in my experience, and me and my girlfriend have bought almost all our furniture at IKEA, including a complete (but rather small) kitchen. As chance would have it, we live just a few km’s from (a completely different) IKEA store now as well…
Anyway – all our (upper?) midclass IT-professional friends (in their 30’s) have IKEA as their main source of new furniture… It’s cheap, it’s easy to transport back home, it’s really not that complicated to assembly, and it’s good looking! And the quality is mostly very good. I have a desk (ok – solid wood with steel legs) that’s been with me for about 12 years, and a bookshelf (not solid wood) that’s been around for almost as long…

I can understand the frustration when something doesn’t fit , or some parts are missing, if you live hundreds of miles away from the store, but – at least in Sweden – IKEA ALWAYS helps you fix it and replaces all damaged parts without question.

“Too much design is just stifling, though. When everything has been measured, planned, optimized and aestheticized within an inch of its life, it begins to weigh down with the invisible tonnage of oppression. Ikea makes me go haywire because there’s almost nothing about the experience that doesn’t feel artificial.”

http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0618_the_complete.php

Boy am I ever late to this conversation.

Rahbuhbuh, thanks for suggesting the design blog. I’ll check it out.

As for guests I have a couple of ideas: Grant McCracken, who I think of as the real Malcom Gladwell, and Elen Lewis, author of Great Ikea. I did contact Jules, the woman behind the blog Ikea Hacker. She lives in Singapore so it would be hard to have her on live but I’ve asked her if she is willing to record a phone conversation, which we would play during the broadcast. I also have fantasies of taking my recording equipment on the Ikea shuttle, which transports Ikeaphiles rom Port Authority Station to the Ikea in Elizabeth, NJ. It would be an opportunity to collect some great tape for the show.

I love Ikea to bits but I’ll save my frothing for a future entry.

maybe one of these folks, prominent industrial design blog:
http://core77.com/

..”And since I thought, foolishly, that the experience was a flook (sp?)..”-
It is, I believe, “fleuque”… unless you’re referring to the barb on an anchor, or a bit of whale’s tail… (Oh- & my favorite- from Webster’s olde “New Collegiate”:” an accidentally successful stroke at billiards or pool; hence, any accidental stroke of luck”.) Too bad about the love-seat… but you didn’t really need it- right?
Re- source of “The Great Northwet”: quite likely it’s a trope, desirous of meme status, promulgated by the James G. Blaine Society, in its heyday… ^..^

Now, the downside, you have to know your kitchen down to the last centimeter. You spend hours pouring over the cabinet dimensions, trying to make things fit. You try to get all the extra pieces you need to order. Because…..the ’specialists’ at the store, aren’t. They’ve had the crash course in kitchen design. We finally got all the pieces ordered after 3 trips. The first was a bust because we hadn’t made an ‘appointment’ and you can’t find a phone number for IKEA anywhere. The second and third appt’s. were because we needed more measurements.

And then…..drum roll….. the stuff was COMING FROM SWEDEN, on the slow boat.(I’m in CA) 8.5 weeks later pieces arrived. Not all the pieces.(you are required to check all the boxes at the store and open them immediately at home to check again), we had about 18 boxes. Another 2 weeks, call them up(15-30 mins) and they’d never heard of the re-order of the missing parts of the kitchen. Then they started trickling in, piece by piece. The phone waits were intermible, every new employee was surprised at my phone calls and I never talked to the same person, even though I had a ‘personal designer’.

That was the part that I don’t think I can do again.

The kitchen, however, was beautiful and functional. And extremely reasonable. I saved about 15,000$, and I priced the Box Stores (HD, Lowes), too.

And since I thought, foolishly, that the experience was a flook (sp?), I bought a loveseat, got a queen sofa bed, bought a bed, got no bed rails. This time I was >300 miles from the store and they delivered. The sofa, I kept.

I get tense just thinking about it.

Secondly, pnelson, please don’t take any offence in my willingness to debate your arguments, too many people take this stuff personally. I’ve read your writings here and I think you’re a well informed interesting person.

Having said that… I don’t know if you get your biodiesel info from, Exxon or BP, but post a link here and educate me. I’m not talking about ethanol I’m talking about biodiesel. The bio-diesel I use is made from recycled vegetable oil. Even if I was using petro diesel it still pollutes less then a new gasoline SUV, check out this link, http://www.stealthtdi.com/Emissions.html

But… this is all off point, sorry… I know when I said “do you want to be sitting on the same couch 20 years from now?” it was very subjective, and a bit rhetorical, but I bet many would answer differently then you. Americans in general are all about throwing perfectly good things away to buy new ones. If anyone has any unwanted, or broken Ikea stuff, just send it to me! You’ll also have to know how to write in Cyrillic to address it, but I’ll be back in the US sometime this summer.

They say that the ‘Founding Fathers’, many of them, knew that slavery should not go on, but swallowed that pill to establish independence, a viable linkage of 13 colonies. Some of them knew slavery could not be digested and would eventually have to be dealt with — they clearly were unable to.

Our lifestyle can’t go on. Many of us know that our ‘instant gratification’ and ‘more now’ mentality will have to be dealt with — and clearly we haven’t been able to. IKEA is a symbol of this, related as it is to our Real Estate wealth. Homeowner in the USA? Yo’ ‘landed wealth’ bro’! IKEA fills the space in decorator style.

(I want to go home, but it’s been re-done by a set designer.)

I would have put logic in quotes, too, i.e., “logic”.

Cars are incredibly environmentally-expensive both to manufacture and dispose of. So from an environmental standoint it makes sense to impose that cost on the environment as infrequently as possible, i.e., make cars last as long as possible. The only quibble I have with your Mercedes is that it probably produces lost of pollution – both CO2 and other kinds – compared with more modern cars. Biofuel doesn’t really help much with that since most studies have found that the amount of fossil-fuel it takes to create an energy-equivalanet of biofuel does not produce a winning equation.

Anyway the same principle of manufacture and disposal applies to furnitur so it makes sense to make them last as long as possible.

Also you should ask yourself, do you want to be sitting on the same couch 20 years from now?

Why not? As long as it stays comfortable. Good design never goes out of style.

I was in Sweden as a student in the 60s when that country was relatively poor. As an apostate architecture student, one thing that impressed me was how even lower middle class people there-like friends-had nicely designed objects as part of their daily life…while inexpensive stuff in the USA generally looked like crap.

And I think that’s the scandinavian appeal of IKEA today: pretty good design for things in your daily life, generally quite sturdy and affordable. No, it’s not as high zoot as the stuff in Design Within Reach’s catalog, but then again it costs 1/3 the price.

I outfitted our offices several years ago with IKEA desks, file cabinets and chairs. Our conference chairs are simple, pleasing to the eye and cost $19. The desks are well made and elegant and cost under $200. The fabric on some of the office chairs does wear out in a year or two, but then again they cost $60 not $900 like an Aeron chair. We did two kitchens for under $6000 total; they get hard use and still look new.

IKEA brings good design to ordinary people who used to be offered stuff that looked like crap for the same price. For that I thank them.

I a lot of people seem hung up on the “disposable” issue. I am sensitive to the notion of not filling our landfills with items when we get tired of them but I would like to make two points.

One, after two kids and one puppy, our living room furnishings were in a pretty sad state. IKEA is a great resource for families. I don’t know of any other furniture company that provides inexpensive furnishings in a variety of styles with inexpensive covers that can be removed and laundered or replaced to refresh their look.

Two, and this is a very subjective opinion, I find some of their furniture to be very beautiful and some of it I don’t care for. It is the nature of humans to surround themselves with beauty, it makes them happy. Shouldn’t people, even those without a lot of money, be able to buy furniture that expresses their sense of style? I thought some of the comments implied that furniture should be utilitarian above all other attributes.

And finally, furniture changes with fashion just like clothes change with fashion. I have seen friend’s “built to last” expensive furniture look pretty dated 10 years later. If that doesn’t bother you, that’s great but in my experience, people regret their decisions later on. My afforementioned sad living room was country style which was all the rage when I bought it. I was very happy to see it go and replaced it with a retro 50’s modern look. 10-15 years from now, if I despise it, I can replace it without regretting the money I spent on it and it can go on to furnish my kids homes or someone else when I donate it.

THE POINT IS: Almost everyone sees the logic in being “practical” in buying a new, poorly made, corners cut car, which will fall apart in 5 years, so why shouldn’t you expect this behavior in buying a couch?

Also you should ask yourself, do you want to be sitting on the same couch 20 years from now?

Nothing lasts forever, nor should it.

It is, and exists now. Where it’s relatively simple, even for a novice, to differentiate quality wood from the cheap stuff or veneer it is difficult for a consumer to know which plastic will retain its structure and stay true over time. It’s the double edged blade of plastics and polymers. It’s difficult for consumers to tell without a lot of customer service facetime.

Up to a point I agree. When I was a college student I bought an old WWI-era US army surplus solid oak desk. It was build like a tank in an era when tanks were just being invented and it weighed about as much. It had zillions of drawers and was indestructible. The problem was that it was so heavy it took a team of musclemen with names like “Bruno” and “Ivan the Tornado” to move it. In the end I ended up drilling it full of holes to accomodate all kinds of electronics and computer gear, and destroying the top of it with soldering iron burns and melted solder. Up to this point it had probably withstood the Kaiser’s bullets, but it was no match for me.

In principle it should be possible to make furniture out of strong lightweight high-tech materials, with modular designs, and that should ALSO last a lifetime, justifying its higher price.

plnelson Says on May 27th, 2007 at 5:23 pm:
I agree about using marine plywood. I disagree about the leaks. Kitchens are INHERENTLY humid even without any leaks. Running water, washing dishes, boiling and simmering things, wiping off counters, etc, dumps prodigious amounts of moisture in the air! My wife and I are avid cooks so we almost always have something on the boil or simmering or being stirred. And because we’re fanatical about food safety we’re always washing off fruits and vegetables, and cleaning off counters and food preparation surfaces.

Put a hygrometer in your kitchen, and I think you’ll be surprised to find that the air stays pretty dry even with all your boiling and simmering, etc. Except in a few naturally humid areas, the typical home in the USA is quite dry, and it takes serious humidifying to make much of a difference. Unless you seal off your kitchen, any increase in water vapor will rapidly dissipate into the rest of the house.

Recently I saw Subaru promoting how environmentally friendly their new US car factory is. They know which side their bread is buttered on: Subaru cars are popular among liberals (full confession: I drive a Forester) and are the preferred way to drive out from Cambridge, Seattle, or Berkeley to the countryside when the urge to hug a tree becomes overwhelming. But the fact is that they don’t get very good mileage – the old 2.5L boxer that has been the mainstay of the brand is in desperate need of a remake, and Subaru’s last remake of it – adding a turbocharger – dramatically REDUCED its fuel economy. If Subaru REALLY wanted to help the environment they could engineer a more efficient car and engine package to add just a few extra MPG’s.

I’ve always wondered why this is.

The fact is that the average workweek in the US is less than 40 hours, whereas in the 19th century it approached 80 hours. So even these financial and computer geniuses have a lot more spare time to replace light switches or learn to use a table saw.

Anyway, speaking as a computer professional, I don’t think the demands of learning the latest programming languages and software design methodologies interfere with learning a few basic skills.

My opinion is that the problem is TV. The average American adult spends 30 hours a week, and the average American child spends over 40 hours glued to the idiot box.

I forgot about the dishwasher. That thing is running all the time and it has these vents on the fron that emit steam. We had a party here over the weekend and someone was telling us he had TWO diswashers, side by side, so they don’t have to put dishes away. I wish I had the room!

BTW re: “The Great Northwet” does anyone know where that stereotype came from? It’s really persistent. The company I work for has an office near Seattle and anytime one of their people arrive here (Boston area) on a rainy day someone notes that they “brought their weather with them”.

Trouble is: it’s not true Seattle’s average rainfall is 37 inches/yr. Boston is 43 inches/yr. (source: NOAA) . It’s like the way everyone calls Chicago “the windy city”. We get more wind than they do, too. Allegedly Chicago got that moniker as a joke about their politicians. I wonder if Seattle’s rep for rain also started off as some sort of metaphor. Lots of places get more rain than Seattle – since this discussion started off referencing Florida, Miami’s average is 62 inches/yr.

ROS should contact an editor from Ready Made magazine on the IKEA hacking angle. Published for those people taking the DIY phenomenom on a budget with a bent on recycling and adapting existing materials… like IKEA shelving which you can pick up on craigslist for $5 as people move and trade up. Whatever the market is doing, consumers want to get its hands dirty if just slightly, hence the umpteen cable TV championing DIY-nes (DIY, H&G, Food, This Old House knockoffs, etc…) channels for those who can afford them and want to get out of the cubicle and “make” something. Or, paint a new gloss on it.
http://readymademag.com/

Assembling IKEA furniture is a false sense of accomplishment, the same cheap glitter of assertion you get at self checkout, but considering no one MAKES anything anymore in the USA it is an improvement to the alternatives. Rather than outfit my life in IKEA, my hunt for quality furniture on such a pathetic budget has actually prompted me to have and want less furniture in general, which is a good thing in my book. Less things to house less stuff. If you wish to fight an anti-crap consumerist battle, better to not buy new furniture at all. However, this requires you to learn to appreciate well built antiques and used things. Scuffs “have a story” as Rebecca Pidgeon’s character said in “State and Main.” The ghosts in my furniture give me more value than plywood pegs.

re: “Swedish Porn”
seems ROS needs to do some show on porn and its stigmas, advocates, and detractors just on the number of comments about a caption.

1. “Modernization” has resulted in a populace that is extremely specialized relative to, arbitrarily, 150 years ago. At that time, people had to be largely self sufficient, and as a result held a much deeper understanding of a broader range of skills, i.e. carpentry, cooking, agriculture/husbandry, etc. As one would expect, as society evolved to require a more specialized work force, the breadth of knowledge on a broad range of subjects has decreased. Today, most Gen Xrs are unable to complete even basic household maintenance, but might be financial wizards, computer geniuses, etc.

2. The American and increasingly generically “western” culture emphasizes form over function, an attitude that is reinforced from cradle to grave through increasingly sophisticated branding campaigns. I quote a friend of mine who works for a telecommunication company who, when asked why phone companies devote less time to figuring out how to deliver television to a 2-inch screen and more time trying to improve the dependability and quality of phone calls, replied “consumers don’t by phones or select carriers based upon quality of phone service, there is no competitive advantage in providing better phone service”

3. Companies used to develop name recognition by providing quality products at a valuable price (not necessarily the cheapest price). The resulting “brand”, i.e. Thomasville, RCA, Hasselbald were dependent upon providing a quality product to consumers who, due to their broader knowledge base, recognized and appreciated this quality. Purchases were carefully considered on the basis of need and product quality, with the expectation that the purchased good would be used for an extended period of time. Today, brand names have nothing to do with quality. The product is secondary to the image, with brand name recognition the result of marketing efforts. This is effective because the majority of the populace does not necessarily recognize quality, or worse yet equates quality with features/functions/price.

IKEA, and other similar companies, are simply exploiting the end result of this evolution from the production of quality goods (and services) resulting in respected brand names, to brand names being the critical factor with the quality of the goods a secondary consideration. IKEA furniture is nice enough, they have good designers. However, IKEA furniture is not designed to last for a lifetime, it’s intended to be disposed of and replaced periodically. The population recognizes IKEA as a unique brand, known for low prices and interesting design, and purchases the products without considering how long those products are likely to last. IKEA is good at promoting “perceived” quality, as opposed to actual quality (the stuff looks good, so it must BE of good quality).

On another note, I find it awkward that IKEA promotes their environmentally sensitive approach, yet a better environmental approach is to manufacture higher quality products that last for a lifetime, don’t need replacement, and can be easily repaired if necessary. However, this requires a consumer market that is sophisticated and motivated enough to look for, and purchase these materials.

In the interest of public disclosure, I own some IKEA furniture. It was what I could afford when I graduated from university. However, now my wife and I are slowly replacing each of these “disposable” items with quality items that should last the rest of our lives.